My debate with Robert Cottrell

Orwell's rules for writers: good or bad?

Here is the video of my debate with Robert Cottrell about Orwell’s writing rules. A slightly imperfect transcript of our remarks is below. The video also contains a discussion with me, Robert, and Sarah Leipciger, and audience questions. Many thanks to Robert and everyone involved at City Lit for their organisational efforts, and to the audience for making the debate possible. Several people voted twice and Robert describes the outcome as a draw, which I am happy to agree with.

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Henry remarks

We have an audience of accomplished writers and I have no business telling any of you what constitutes good writing. Nor do I have any standing arguing against Robert, who is one of the best read people imaginable and must have the most well-informed taste in prose of anybody. Therefore, I am going to use Orwell’s own words—as well as the words of one or two perspicacious observers—to make the argument for me.

To begin with, here is a passage from Politics and the English Language which ought to get more attention. This is the context for Orwell’s second rule, “Never use a long word where a short one will do” and also the fifth rule, “Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.”

Except for the useful abbreviations i.e., e.g., and etc., there is no real need for any of the hundreds of foreign phrases now current in English. Bad writers, and especially scientific, political and sociological writers, are nearly always haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones, and unnecessary words like expedite, ameliorate, predict, extraneous, deracinated, clandestine, sub-aqueous and hundreds of others constantly gain ground from their Anglo-Saxon opposite numbers. The jargon peculiar to Marxist writing (hyena, hangman, cannibal, petty bourgeois, these gentry, lackey, flunkey, mad dog, White Guard, etc.) consists largely of words translated from Russian, German, or French; but the normal way of coining a new word is to use a Latin or Greek root with the appropriate affix and, where necessary, the -ize formation. It is often easier to make up words of this kind (deregionalize, impermissible, extramarital, non-fragmentatory and so forth) than to think up the English words that will cover one’s meaning. The result, in general, is an increase in slovenliness and vagueness.

It is common among Orwell’s apologists to believe him to be a saint of secular liberal goodness. In this passage he sounds more like a Little Englander of English usage. In his brute dislike of foreign phrases he sounds more like the Nigel Farage of prose style than the Orwell of sanctified legend. It is insular, protectionist nonsense to pretend that words like “predict”, “impermissible”, and “clandestine” pose any real threat to language or political thought. His argument is similar to those people who object to having to buy foreign strawberries in the supermarket.

Orwell claims that “the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes” and that this creates a reinforcing loop in which a degraded political culture creates a degraded language which worsens the political culture, and so on and so on. He says that “political writing is bad writing” because “political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible.” Thought corrupts language and then language corrupts thought.

We must all surely be grateful at our rare good luck to find, eighty years later, that the usage of words like “primary”, “promote”, “effective”, “extramarital”, and “expedite” didn’t in fact corrupt our political culture and destroy democracy. Instead Orwell’s large claims about the nature of political language now seem to be cover for his small-minded lexical provincialism. 

This dislike of Latin words led Orwell to his most stupid rule, the injunction against technical, scientific, and jargon language. Imagine if we had taken that seriously during the pandemic. Presumably the Economist and the New Scientist break that rule on every page, every week. Try writing honestly or seriously about government policy without using phrases like “fiscal policy”. 

To debunk the idea that this sort of prose is a way to ensure honest political writing, we need only look to one of Orwell’s contemporaries, whose prose often preferred the Saxon word to the Latin, the short to the long, who disliked jargon, and who used fresh imagery—Winston Churchill, about whose manipulative, dishonest political writing, whole books have been written. If you want further proof that it is possible to write short, simple, English prose and still be a propagandist, pick up any tabloid newspaper, any day of the week. 

What stands out most about this contradiction is that Orwell—supposedly devoted to fact and truth—was primarily a fiction writer. Here is what Orwell said about making arguments with imaginative writing:

“Imaginative” writing is as it were a flank attack upon positions which are impregnable from the front. A writer attempting anything that is not coldly “intellectual” can do very little with words in their primary meanings. He gets his effect, if at all, by using words in a tricky roundabout way.

Tricky, roundabout writing may only be permissible for fiction, rather than non-fiction, but what is 1984 if not political speech? That book, by the way, is exemplary of Orwell’s rules, but was still misused as government propaganda after he died. Suddenly the relationship between plain writing and political truth seems more complicated than Orwell’s rules can admit. There is no style guide for honesty.

The fact is, Orwell’s rules are not rules—or if they are, it is only in the sense that we are taught such rules at school, like the idea that you cannot begin a sentence with “And”. They belong to the same class of silliness as collective nouns like “a murder of crows”, ​​”a diligence of messengers”, or a “superfluity of nuns”. What Orwell’s rules and the collective nouns have in common is that they are just for fun—people talk about them and have fun explicating them, but then go about their business as if they didn’t really exist. No self-respecting person has ever referred to a murder of crows in any real sense, it is something you say at a dinner party conversation or in the pub. If someone pointed to a group of nuns and actually called them “a superfluity” you would probably make a mental note to avoid them in the future. Similarly, people might talk about Orwell’s rules but then they go about their lives using words like “predict” and “expedite” without a second thought for whether the language is in decay and democracy on the beam. Anyone who today tried to tell you that by using the word clandestine you were corrupting the young would be classed with those people who think their television is sending out death rays.

Why then are Orwell’s rules so enduring? The first reason is that they are a sort-of trade union manifesto for writers. Most professional writers enjoy what Martin Amis called The War Against Cliche and Orwell gives them a pithy high-minded justification for this hobby. The contemporary reviewers of Orwell’s essays were mostly novelists and writers and they were all cheered by his opposition to cliche, much in the way that lawyers are always in favour of new regulations and doctors see no need to allow other people to practise even the most basic forms of medicine. 

They are also popular, though, because they are so entertaining, like the collective nouns. The most perceptive contemporary review was by Orwell’s friend the writer Christopher Sykes, who had worked as a diplomat early in his career. He thought it was a mistake to include Politics and the English Language in the collection because it contained some doubtful predictions and was full of overstated views. And he said,

I will make one prophecy myself. George Orwell will be read for a long time to come, but for a reason which might not have much pleased him—namely, that he is such splendid entertainment. 

It is when Orwell is most entertaining—when he produces his best writing—that he is most likely to break his own rules. This passage from Christopher Rick’s essay Cliches demonstrates the way that Orwell broke his own rules to produce such entertaining writing in Politics and the English Language:

Orwell’s darkest urgings, in the words which end his essay, have a weirdly bright undertow.

From time-to-time one can, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase—some jackboot, Achilles’ heel, hotbed, melting pot, acid test, veritable inferno or some other lump of verbal refuse—into the dustbin where it belongs.

For what is most alive in that sentence is not the sequence where Orwell consciously puts his polemical energy—his argumentative train of verbal cliches from ‘worn out’ to ‘useless’ through ‘lump of verbal refuse’ to ‘the dustbin where it belongs’—but rather the sombre glints lurking in the sequence of the scorned cliches themselves: the way in which, even while he was saying they were useless phrases, Orwell used them so as to create a bizarre vitality of poetry. The jackboot has, hard on its heels, Achilles’ heel; then the hotbed at once melts in the heat into melting pot, and then again (a different melting) into acid test—with perhaps some memory of Achilles held by the heel while he was dipped into the Styx; and then finally the veritable inferno, which not only consumes hotbed and melting pot but also, because of veritable, confronts the truth-testing acid test. Orwell may have set his face against those cliches, but his mind, including his co-operative subconscious, was another matter.

As Ricks notes, Orwell’s expressed rules are at odds with his produced work. This, I think, is the core of the debate. Orwell thinks we need a rational system of rules but that is a mistake. Language is not a fixed system: it creates a system while it adapts and changes. It evolves organically without the need of Orwell’s (or anyone else’s) system. Good writing is as good writing does. Language is Darwinian not Newtonian: it is not a fixed system; it changes as you use it.

One rule that you can usefully apply is that good writing meets its purpose. Or, good writing meets the requirements of its medium, mode, or genre. This is vague and complex—such is the way of the world. To believe that simple rules like Orwell’s are possible, is to give in to the temptation of believing there can be an answer about what constitutes good writing. Alas, no such easy answers exist. To the truly liberal mind, comfortable with a world that is largely self-organised, this is no problem. We discover good writing as it emerges organically. But to the socialist mind of Orwell, a rational order is necessary. 

I am here to implore you to be liberal. Ignore the made up rules. Don’t let Orwell tell you what you can write. In 1984 he warned against the government removing words from the dictionary that were no longer politically convenient. But what do his rules do—they place strict limits on what you should and should not say. This is miserable puritanism disguised as liberal intelligentsia. Don’t give in. Orwell himself admitted that tricky, roundabout writing was the most persuasive. Hsi friend Christopher Sykes revealed him as more entertaining than serious. And Ricks showed that no-one writes better when breaking Orwell’s rules than Orwell himself. Don’t let the urge to find simple rules distract you from the truth of the matter—there are no rules of writing. If you feel uncomfortable that this might leave us somewhat adrift, ignorant of what good writing really is, remember what Samuel Johnson said, “to be ignorant is painful; but it is dangerous to quiet our uneasiness by the delusive opiate of hasty persuasion.” My argument is simple: do not give in to the delusive opiate of Orwell’s hasty, and very entertaining, persuasion.

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Robert’s remarks

Henry is a fine writer (as well as a fine speaker). That's how we met. I enjoyed his newsletter, The Common Reader. I knew he was working on a book. I wanted to meet him. When we did contrive to meet we found ourselves talking about lots of things, particularly about writing style, and particularly about Orwell’s rules, which are still taught and respected widely in journalism, and I was surprised that our opinions differed so much.

At first I thought we were having a superficial disagreement. I myself am often tempted to say that rules for writers are a bad thing, writers are free spirits, writers can say what they like how they like, and I can see some merit in those claims.

But deep down I know that all writers follow rules. Rules of spelling, rules of syntax, rules of grammar. You can defy even those rules, you can write Finnegans Wake, but then nobody understands you.

Many writers and many journalists are fanatical about rules of punctuation in particular — for example, rules about split infinitives, or Oxford commas. As though such rules are the criminal code of the writing world, whereas questions of style are the jurisprudence.

The more that people consider themselves to be writers, in my experience, the more likely they are to think that good writing style cannot be captured in rules.

But somehow, having found myself in the position of defending rules for writers, and particularly Orwell's rules, the more I have been thinking about them; the more I have found myself agreeing with them; the more I have realised how much I myself have been practising these rules unthinkingly.

In fact, I suspect that most writers privately have their own rules, and most often those rules are similar to Orwell's rules, which accounts for the popularity of Orwell's rules.

But writers are reluctant to admit that they follow rules, even to themselves, because they like to think that good writing involves something transcendent, something magical, something no rules can capture or constrain. And this is certainly true of the best writing.

I also suspect that, deep at work in the writing psyche, is an ancient emnity between writers and editors.

A writer looks at Orwell's rules and imagines Orwell as some great editor in the sky poised to blue-pencil all the long words our of Shakespeare and Milton.

So let's be clear on this point: Rules for writers are not rules for editors. I

f you are a writer, and I am an editor, and you use a long word, then I am not entitled to delete the long word and insert a short word, at least not without asking you.

Strict rules for editors do exist, but they are almost entirely about consistency: where to put hyphens, what words to capitalise, stuff like that.

Sometimes you get rules for writers and editors wrapped up together in a Style Book. The Economist Style book is well-known; and it is pretty strictly enforced within the publication. A style book standardises the writing voice to some degree.

But that's something which you should accept and even desire if you find yourself in the happy position of writing for The Economist, or reading The Economist. If you don't like The Economist style, then possibly you should consider writing or reading something else.

Which brings us to the question: Who are these writers, for whom these "rules for writers" are intended.

It is tempting here to make a distinction between journalism and literature, as Orwell does himself. We might say: Orwell's rules are good for journalists, and speech writers, and technical writers, but not for writers of literature.

We might even try to define literature as writing by people who don't follow any rules. But I don't think that holds up.

I can't see that a set of rules might be useful for getting ideas across in journalism, but not for getting ideas across in literature.

I think we have to make the case for Orwell's rules being also good for literary writers, for authors. If we want to say that Orwell's rules are more relevant to journalists and less relevant to authors, I can live with that, but I do think they are relevant and recommendable to authors too.

Let's go to the rules

Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
This is a terrible rule. Our entire language consists of figures of speech which we are used to seeing in print. What Orwell means is "don't write in clichés". I don't know why he didn't say that. Perhaps he felt a need to explain what clichés were. Or he got tangled up in his own rule against foreign words, which we will come to shortly.

Never use a long word where a short one will do. This is an excellent rule.
Please note what it says. It says: Never use a long word where a short one will do. It doesn't say: Never use a long word.

It's up to you, the writer, to decide whether the short word will do what you want it to do.

Often you can just say "bad". There may be times when you really do need to say "egregious" or "substandard" or "lamentable". But if you can just say "bad", then say "bad".

If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
My first reaction to this rule is to cut out the word "always". Then to cut out both of the "outs". Then to collapse the impersonal construction. What we are left with is: "If you can cut a word, cut it". Eight words in place of 13. But even in its original form, this is an excellent rule.

Again, please note what it says.

You, the author, decide whether a word can be cut. There will be situations in which you can cut a word with no loss of meaning.

There will be times when cutting a word changes the meaning entirely. There is a lot of difference between "good" and "not good".

There will be situations in which you fear that cutting a word might result in some loss of nuance. The problems are always in that middle zone, where you have used a word in the hope of capturing a nuance, probably an adverb or an intensifier.

"She smiled", is fine.

"She smiled happily". Well perhaps its good to be on the safe side. Your call. "She smiled very happily".

Honestly, at this point I would consider a different verb, or finding some other way of making the point.

"She smiled sadly". Here, the adverb is doing some useful work. It pays its way. It cannot be cut.

"He sat down, awkwardly". I am always reading about people sitting down "awkwardly" but I am not sure I have ever seen it happen in real life. I have only ever seen people sit down and then shuffle about a bit.

Another reason to cut words is that brevity and clarity usually go together. We can get philosophical about whether brevity and clarity necessarily go together, and why brevity and clarity should be considered good things in the first place.

My basic view here is that we live in conditions of uncertainty, there are lots of things that we do not know, so brevity and clarity are useful conventions for communicating the information that we do know in easily digested forms.

But for brevity alone, which is the subject of this rule, the argument is much simpler.

If you can say something in a few words, then additional words cannot possibly be useful, because you have already said what you wanted to say.

Never use the passive where you can use the active
This rule tends to get grammarians excited. The wording is a bit aggressive, and a bit forbidding.

If Orwell had said, "use the active voice wherever you can", that would have gone down more easily. Though it would still have left us with the question of — What is the active voice?

It is often quite difficult to tell the active voice and the passive voice apart, with the result that we get confused about the extent of this rule.

If I say "the room was crowded" — that feels a bit a passive voice. Poor room, getting crowded like that.

But if I say "the room was empty", we can see that "crowded" and "empty" are adjectives. The rule is irrelevant.

"John was hurt". Is that the passive voice? If John was walking around in a general state of hurtfulness, then no. John was hurt in much the same way that Jill was happy and James was tall. But if, when I say, "John was hurt", the story is really that "I hurt John", or "John was hurt by me", then "John was hurt" is passive, and I have used it to obscure my part in John's tragedy.

This gets us the point of Orwell's rule, I think. It isn't really about the niceties of grammar. It's about information. The passive voice implies that the important part of a given action is the person or thing on the receiving end of it.

Sometimes this is the case: "President Kennedy assassinated" is a perfect, passive, headline. "Unknown person assassinates President Kennedy" is a terrible headline, even though it is written in the active voice.

If we want an example of the passive voice to put in a museum of grammar for future generations to admire, we might choose the phrase: "Mistakes were made".

If I were to say instead, "President Bush made mistakes", we would have a lot more useful information.

I might say: "Mistakes were made by President Bush and by other people in his administration".

or, "Mistakes were made by President Bush but they weren't nearly as bad as the newspapers claimed".

These are well-formed sentences in which we want to enlarge upon the mistakes, without obscuring their authorship. The only occasion on which I must use the passive voice is if I want to admit that "mistakes were made" without mentioning President Bush at all — if I were President Bush, for example. But that would be a matter of strategy rather than style.

So, in general, the active voice generally gives the clearest picture of events.

My own feeling is that if you feel use the passive voice, then probably you should have reason for doing so. You want put what has been done, or the person to whom it has been done, at the focal point of the sentence; you want to move the person who did the thing to the margins of the sentence, or leave them out entirely. If so, you are in perfect conformity with Orwell's rule.

Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent
Sounds quite Brexitty. The finnicky foreign phrases with all their vinaigrettes and fancy sauces. The roast beef of everyday English.

Orwell was quite conservative in his culture. But let that not dissuade us from understanding what he is saying here, and then agreeing with it.

Note that Orwell says "foreign phrase", not "foreign word". He does say "scientific word" so obviously the distinction matters.

It matters, because, when it comes to words there is no defensive moat separating English words from foreign words.

— first, because English is an international language. Your lift is my elevator;

— second, because all English words come from somewhere. All of our root words come from Sanskrit or Latin or Old Norse or ChatGPT or whatever.

There are millions and millions of foreign words which are not English. The Chinese language is full of them. But there are no English words which are not in some way foreign.

As for foreign phrases, let's say that a foreign phase is a phrase that we would expect to see in italics: "Esprit d'escalier" for example. "Noblesse oblige". "Mutatis mutandis". "Ad infinitum". "Reductio ad absurdum". "Weltschmerz" — in the case of German we have to blur the distinction between words and phrases.

Sometimes we have everyday English equivalents, sometimes we don't. If I say, "for ever", that will probably do in place of "ad infinitum". There is trade-off here between showing off, and wanting to be understood. It's probably better to want to be understood.

It's also worth noting that foreign phrases used in everyday English are almost always clichés, they are almost always used ironically, they are very frequently misunderstood and misspelt, and there is very rarely agreement on how they should be pronounced. So by using them you are taking lots of risks that you do not need to take.

Scentific words? It depends who you are writing for. Orwell had the general reader in mind.

If you are a novelist writing for the general reader you say "heart attack". If you are a doctor writing a clinical note for another doctor you say "myocardial infarction", if that is a more exact term which is likely to communicate more concrete information to your intended reader, another doctor.

There is a lot of science in the world, we often have to talk about it, and it's hard to talk about science without using scientific words.

Orwell's rule is limited to cases in which you choose to use a scientific word even when you have an everyday English equivalent to hand.

If you don't know the term "heart attack", but you do know the term "myocardial infarction" — say you are a visiting cardiologist with very little English — then you are going to have to say "myocardial infarction" even when making the smallest of small talk.

But if you do know the term "heart attack" then you will do well to use that in ordinary speech, because you are more likely to be understood by more people.

Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
This is another stupid rule. It's a standard get-out clause which I see attached to all rules for writers.

It's meant to make you feel better about following the rules, by telling you that you don't have to follow them if you don't want to. And of course that is the case. These rules are not legally binding.

But if you can distinguish confidently between bad writing and good writing then you have much less need of Orwell's rules in the first place.

I find the wording of it patronising and offensive, rather as though we are all liable to veer into "barbarism" if we are stupid enough to take Orwell's rules too literally.

I also find the instruction illogical. If I want to say something barbarous, then surely Orwell's rules will be just as helpful to me as they are when I want to say something non-barbarous.

I would rather see this last rule rephrased to express more clearly the limitations of the rules themselves. For example:

Follow these rules, only to the extent that you want or need such rules to follow.

I've been writing for a living for more than forty years now. I thought I had outgrown other people's rules, but in fact I had just forgotten them.

Going back to Orwell's rules, I see a lot of good points that I had forgotten or misunderstood. I've tried to bring out those points in talking here this evening.

I'm very grateful to Henry and Sarah and Phyllis and Katell and Jackson and City Lit for giving me cause to look again at what I thought I knew, I'm very grateful to you for listening so patiently, and I look forward very much to any comments and criticisms that you may have.